Rejection

This morn­ing, before break­fast, I checked my email. One of my short sto­ries, which made it into the sec­ond round at a pub­li­ca­tion (a rar­efied space that, accord­ing to their sta­tis­tics, only 10% of sub­mit­ted sto­ries ever enter), had been reject­ed.

So I moped for about five minutes—I’d had high hopes for this one, and now they’d been dashed—then had break­fast and prepped it for anoth­er mar­ket. (Always read the sub­mis­sion guide­lines: the sec­ond pub­lish­er wants all trace of the author’s name scrubbed from the sub­mis­sion, to allow blind judg­ing.)

Moral: If you’re an author, get used to rejec­tion. But don’t let it get you down.